We're whores, whores!
We have, I am afraid, been lied to.
Let me begin with some context. My generation, on the whole, is really lousy at rebellion. We (of course I refer to the upper middle class) were raised by Baby Boomers with a bottomless tolerance for pretty much anything: we had nothing to rebel against, and if we did rebel, we’d look irrefutably stupid. We decided early on that the Man was okay and would produce for us, and therefore we bought into The System hook line and sinker, placed all our bets on the Achievotron, the mechanics of American success.
AP exams, endless homework, ceaseless jockeying for Ivy League positions, we did it all, 110% certain that our freakish work ethics and desire to Change the World. We were certain that our inherent uniqueness, the specialness our parents had assured us we carried within us from birth onward, would give us all we wanted and more would allow us to become Captains of Industry and Titans of Philanthropy. We believed all this.
And then the economy broke, fell flat on its face, and the path was not so clear anymore. Uh oh.
So what are we, my generation, us bright eyed and bushy-tailed Generation Y’ers to do about this whole terrible mess? We could, it is true, simply buckle down and work harder, become resolute in our ambition to bust our asses as hard as Asian kids do every day, to throw ourselves on our knees before the idols of Kaplan, Hah-vad and college admissions boards everywhere to deliver us, oh please.
Or we could, for once, try a little rebellion, a little freedom, a little peace n’ love. Most of all, I think my generation could use a little healthy, positive, cynicism. It don't take a genius to see that the advice us Generation Y'ers has been given our entire lives is in fact total BS - that working hard and punching the ticket and volunteering with sick African children will not earn us meaningful careers and repute and Wikipedia entries. We are, we are now forced to admit, living in a world that does not find us special and often even finds us expendable. We as young people, as Generation Y, are going to need to reset our expectations. We are going to have to adapt to a less glittery future, or we will go completely insane. What form will that adaption take?
They knew how to rebel! They smelled bad and failed geometry and they didn't even care!
There are some good options. Our predecessors in youthful rebellion – look at Generation X, look at our own parents – seemed to do quite well with cynicism and distrust for the elder generation. Perhaps we must regard our own parents and authority figures with a gimlet eyeball, demand more of them, refuse to roll over and do what they say because they said it.We should listen to what the sixties idols (whose music we adore) are talking about, perhaps get a little of that anarchist and rebellious spirit – not that these movements really made the world any better, but they at least declared independence, freed their adherents from believing every cotton picking thing authorities and parents told them was good and true. As a helicopter parented and independence deprived generation, we are going to have to man up, we are going to have to cut the umbilical cord and separate ourselves from our parents encompassing petticoats and find our own path – because the system we bought into, it is evident, is not going to provide for us any longer.
And if the demise of that system means we are not all going to be able to become hot-shot bankers or heroic philanthropists or environmental lawyers, then we are going to have to accept it. There are more ways to make a living on this earth then glamour positions. There are more ways to be happy and successful then punching the ticket, toeing the line, and following the career track to its bitter (and now uncertain) end. And we, Generation Y, are going to have to accept that, embrace it.
I'm going to try to do what I can to deal, and I suggest that you, my poor and startled twenty-something counterparts, try to do the same. I think it is good advice. I do not know if I will be able to take it.
Oh Jack, you oddly bewitching bloated alcoholic, we need ya!
But it's so hard. We do care. Look at my story. I've driven myself to the brink of total and complete wack-job behavior in my college career, all in an effort to secure the almighty 4.0. When I was in high school, I had myself convinced I wouldn't be beholden to the almighty Achieve-O-Tron when I was 15 and on a really obnoxious Jack Kerouac kick. Of course, that was wishful thinking, By my junior year of high school, I had totally bought into it. I did community service and obsessed about the right schools and had happy contemplative thoughts about nice careers and accolades in interesting magazines.
By the time I hit college, I was totally inducted into the cult: after a bit of mild partying, I buckled down, certain that if I got anything less then A’s in all my classes that I would be rejected from all possible graduate schools, end up in a dead end job, and would witness plagues of locusts, toads, and blood. By the end of my time at Simon’s Rock, my first college, I was in such an achievement-whore state that I would become hysterical with fear upon checking my grades, would almost lick the feet of my professors in an effort to get an A, torpedoed my social life in the name of flash cards and paper-writing and overall intellectual development. It was no way to live, not for a pay off that was abstract then and seems so much more abstract now. I was a total mess by the time I left the Rock, but I had a 4.0 in hand, and I figured things might be all right.
I was going to stay in India and drive one of these. True story.
I almost did it: I almost broke free of it all last year, when I was working in India. Unlucky circumstances almost (ironically) freed me up forever. My transfer application to the University of California system, which I had almost entirely betted on, was rendered completely useless by a screw up on my guidance counselors part. I discovered I had been rejected from every school I applied to from an internet café in Bangalore, and, as you might expect, freaked out completely. Despite the 12 hour time difference, I wrote groveling letters to the UC’s admissions board, rallied my favorite professors to write letters on my behalf, hoping against hope that the UC’s would reconsider.
Nope: the math class I had taken (in belief that it would transfer) was Required At All Costs, and therefore, my perfect grades and perfect extracurriculurs and perfect shit-eating little grin would not be permitted to attend any UC campuses (thank you very much). I was devastated.
And then I started thinking. I realized these things:
1: The USA educational system had, despite all my hard work, had, in essence, told me to take a hike, had made irrefutably clear that my specialness was, sadly, simply not Special Enough.
2.: There really was no compelling reason to go back to school, or even back to the United States. (They had all rejected me, I had by proxy rejected them, and anyway many great writers didn’t even go to college, it was true).
3. Perhaps specialness, overachievement, and punching the ticket were not all there was to life. Perhaps my life in Bangalore – containing, as it did, long evenings at disreputably reputable nightclubs, mysterious seafood curries, and general high adventure was better then what I had left behind.
I was almost ready to stay in India. I suspected it would be easy to find work as a night club promoter or luxury hotel employee in town – I knew people who knew people – and living expenses were next to nothing on the Subcontinent. I could make a new life there. I might never have to go back. I could, at least theoretically, snag myself an Indian real estate maven, have a tremendous wedding involving white elephants, and divest myself of all learning for the rest of my life. These were all possible .
But I was not brave enough to break away, not yet. I played my last card: I applied to Tulane University in New Orleans at the very last minute primarily because I still could and because I have ancestral routes in the Big Easy. I was astonished to find I had been awarded not only admission but a hefty partial scholarship. I moved to New Orleans.
I like Tulane, and I like New Orleans. Tulane has been good to me, and I’ve been able to explore my interests, meet interesting people, and take engaging (and small) classes. On the whole my college nightmare, such at it was, has worked out nicely. But still I wonder.
For I am still a grades whore, a sniveler, a desperate adherent to the cult of Achieving Shit. I still go into minor fits when a teacher sends out the wrong homework or I get a question wrong on a test, and my heart still drops twelve feet into my stomach (are hearts above stomachs, or stomachs above hearts – by the way?) when I find I cannot understand some scrap of material. I was ready to break away but I did not do it, and I find that I am still as much of a slave to the Achieve-O-Tron seems as far away and impossible as it did before. But I know I have to do it. I know I should do it. I should start caring less.
But to walk away from the Achieve-O-Tron is in essence impossible: when I think of doing so I think of working in a McDonalds and being terrifically bored for the rest of my existence. But of course that is not really the case; of course you can survive and do exceedingly well sans Ivy League degree and multiple awards. I will try as hard as I possibly can to believe this and act on it, and, fellow Young People of America, I hope you will do the same. It’s about the only way I can see out of this, about the only way we’re going to be able to to keep our sanity and our wits about us. I hope we’re up to the challenge.
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